Heinrich Böll’s complete texts on Cologne, accompanied by numerous photographs
There is hardly a German writer who is more associated with a particular city in the consciousness of his readers than Heinrich Böll is with Cologne. He was born there in 1917, spent his childhood and young adulthood there. And this is where he returned after his time as a soldier and a prisoner of war to begin his literary career, which earned him not only the Nobel Prize, but also the Literaturpreis and honorary citizenship of the city of Cologne.
There are loving and detailed descriptions of the southern part of Cologne before the war, perceptive observations on the transformation of the city and its residents under the Nazi regime and intense descriptions of the chaotic conditions after the war came to an end. And yet Böll’s relationship with the city remained ambivalent. Both the city’s institutions and the general public responded negatively to many of his criticisms.
René Böll reconstructs Böll’s Cologne using his father’s texts and visual materials – and invites you to read and to visit the city through the words of the greatest writer from the city on the Rhine.
